This sketch shows you how to read the Tinkerkit Inputs on the Arduino Esplora. The result is read on A4 when the address lines point to the desired input. The multiplexer address lines are connected to the ATMEGA logical analog lines A0, A1, A2, and A3. The multiplexer allows more sensors to connect to the ATMEGA 32U4 microcontroller. They cannot be read directly by analogRead as they are connected through the Esplora's 74HC4067D multiplexer chip. The two Tinkerkit Inputs are the white three-pin connectors to the right of the USB port. The two white Esplora Tinkerkit Inputs IN-A and IN-B to the right of the USB cable

This post will provide information on how you can read the inputs before the Arduino team releases their code. At present the Arduino IDE does not have code to easily use these connectors. Values should be printed using Serial.print() instead of Serial.println() which is better for single-value logging.The Esplora is expandable via two Tinketkit Outputs and two Tinkerkit Inputs.

The code is quite simple, just use spaces or tabs to separate your data. Multiple inputsĪfter some more tinkering I stumbled upon the multi-line plotting.

If the plotter shows inconsistent data, producing jagged lines, then perhaps it's time to try input smoothing to achieve a less noisy, smoother line in the plotter.

It also makes easy work of determining when you have unsteady input, as I had in my previous post. The original Serial Monitor displays text data only, and while a stream of numbers can be quite useful, pictures are worth a thousand words, or numbers in this case.Īs of version 1.6.6 the IDE comes with a built in plotter that accepts a stream of numbers from Serial.println and graphs them over time, auto-scaling the Y-axis to include your highest and lowest sample values.Īs a visually-oriented person this made me so happy to find! If you're debugging analog sensor data, I'd highly recommend enabling the plotter to make sense of the readings. Debugging wobbly input dataĪrduino IDE has a Serial Plotter which is a fantastic debugging tool to complement the raw logging monitor. I found this plotting tool within the Arduino IDE to help me. While experimenting with various sensors I eventually came to the point where I wanted to smooth input data in order to get a more steady readings.

Arduino multiple serial inputs